Miscellaneous

Guy in the middle is having a ball. (blueprint1)
Who says American cars don't have souls? (mrryte)
The ghosts of LT past come back to haunt IL. (blueprint1)
Will the ghouls fit? (blueprint1)
How are the Suicide Doors Working for You? (noburgers)
The Sixth Gear (ergsum)
Which side is the fuel filler door on? (noburgers)
The Grim Raptor (mrryte)
The grateful dead. (kain77)
Which way to the nearest ghast station? (mrryte)
Found On Road un-Dead (mrryte)
Caranormal Activity (ergsum)
Ghouls Just Want To Have Fun (ergsum)
He did it! He did it! He did it! (zoomzoomn)
The Ford Raptor now comes with EctoBoost. (ergsum)
Bumper sticker reads: "My Other Vehicle is a MaliBOO!" (ergsum)

We're still missing the Raptor around here -- me worse than anybody. But today I saw this flat black SuperCrew Raptor cruising down the freeway looking utterly bad ass with black aftermarket wheels. It was like somebody read my mind.

I'm sad to see our Raptor go. I miss having an SUV in the fleet. But at the same time it creates excitement as to what we'll get next. I've always been a fan of the Defender, but it doesn't look like a possibility.

I look at the site bringatrailer.com almost every day. It's basically car porn. It's filled with the bizarre and cool. I find reading the site is similar to being stuck in a multi-hour Wikipedia knowledge quest. By the time you're done, you have 30 tabs open and can't remember where you started. But recently I did see something that grabbed my attention...

We sold the Ford F-150 Raptor last night after only 12 days -- not the two months as dwengier77 predicted. We priced the car aggressively, but knew we would probably have to drop the price during negotiations. Buyers aren't afraid to offer thousands less than the asking price.

After the ad was listed on AutoTrader for $39,900, I got quite a few calls right off the bat. The first people to call were the car flippers. They asked a few basic questions like "Has it ever been in an accident?" and then proceed to make a lowball offer, sight unseen. "I'll give you $36,000 cash!" they'd say, as if we might be desperate to jump at the mere mention of cash. I can't really say if they are real buyers or not, because I never got far with them. These are "take it or leave it" type offers. A real buyer asks you questions like "Has it ever gone off-road? Who drove the car? Has it given you any problems?"

After a few more inquiries I realized that the real Raptor buyers were very savvy. They knew a lot about the car and were more concerned about the high mileage, how it was driven and the price. I was upfront with everyone and let them know it had been driven by multiple people and it went off road a few times. This did scare off one buyer who compared our Raptor to a "rental car," since so many people had driven it.

I received advice from the least likely of sources, a buyer who had offered $35,000 and then changed his mind because, according to him, the more he heard about this car, the less he wanted it. "These aren't regular F-150s that you put a bunch of miles on," he said. "These are toys that you drive on the weekend. You're going to have a hard time selling it with these miles and for this price. If I were you, I would list it at $37,900 and hold firm on that price."

He told me that there were a number of Raptors out there with significantly less miles and being offered at a similar price. These trucks were in other states, but he (and presumably other Raptor buyers) was willing to get the car shipped.

He made a convincing case for dropping the price. I was already going to drop it to $38,900 after a week, but I the more I thought about it the more I realized that it wasn't going to be a significant enough drop. Although our price was competitive with the other Raptors on AutoTrader, our mileage was higher. The next morning, I dropped the price to $37,900 and added "price firm" to the description.

We eventually sold the car to a woman who worked for a casino in Southern California. She was buying the Raptor for her son who was about to graduate from high school. After some discussion, we made a deal at $37,000.

At this point I handed things off to my colleague, Phil Reed. He lives closer to the woman so it was more convenient for her to meet him at his home rather than mine. Here is his account of how the sale was closed:

"The woman showed up after dark with her son and two other guys. One of them could have been a pro football player with a hand so big it was like trying to shake with a bowling ball. I gave them the keys and when I got out to the truck they were under the hood with flashlights. 'Why are the fender bolts turned?' one of them demanded. This was another way of saying that body work had been done on the truck following an accident. So I said, 'I don't know what you're looking at, but this truck has never been in an accident and wasn't taken to a body shop.' Then the woman said, 'Why is the bed all scratched?' There was no way to answer this than to say, 'Because it's a truck.'

"The big guy was the designated driver and he didn't hesitate to tap into the power. If you're considering buying a used car, it's important to verify the condition. But I think you should wait until you own it to start chirping the tires. I was getting a little tired of all this but I was pretty sure the woman had a check in her purse and we were close to closing this deal. So I let it go. Sure enough, they all decided the truck was a good buy and she turned over the cashier's check for $37,000."

Here are the final numbers:
MSRP: $43,300
We paid: $39,992 ($44,689 after tax, title and license fees)
Current TMV: $37,411
Carmax offer: $35,000
Sold for: $37,000

I just got back from taking our Ford F-150 Raptor to Carmax and I was a little disappointed by the appraisal. The service was great and I was in and out of there in about 30 minutes, but I was expecting a "strong money," offer like the recently departed Volkswagen GTI.

Carmax offered us $35,000. Congratulations to "theace415" for a spot on prediction. I was expecting $36,000. Here are a few numbers to put things in perspective:

Our trade in TMV was very close to the Carmax offer. But if you look at private party Raptor prices, people are asking between $36,000- $41,000, depending on the miles.

Edmunds private party TMV for the Raptor is $37,493. The boss says he's in no rush to sell the truck, so we are going to price it aggressively. After careful consideration, we have decided to list it at $39,900. We have a more desirable color and the 6.2 liter engine (an option at the time) in our favor. Before you hit that comment button, please keep in mind that this is the asking price. We always leave room for negotiation.

This is my favorite detail on the Raptor. Near as I can tell it does nothing but look cool. And that's enough. Honestly, that's what I love about this truck: It's strikes a perfect balance of function and style.

Anyone with an eye for these items can see them in passing without effort. And even those who know nothing seem to take notice.

A scrap heap, where I dropped of some old brake rotors, the busted red floor jack used in the first suspension walkarounds and a rusted and leaky (and fully drained, and flushed) gas tank from that '57 Ford of mine.

(Let me know if this or any of the following shots of the 2010 Ford SVT Raptor's exploits during my recent move should be submitted to Donna for a caption contest.)

Some of you might remember this kid who enjoyed breakfast with the Raptor a few months back. Well this morning the pure awesomeness of a funny kid and big truck collided with undeniable charm right in my driveway.

Unlike the last place we lived, a city ringed by tinder-dry hillsides, our new hometown allows fireworks. The girls have never experienced anything but city-sponsored displays before, so they didn't quite know what to expect when we all piled into the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor for a trip to the local fireworks stand.

It didn't take long before they got the idea. In no time we had ourselves a bag full of sparklers, snakes, piccolo Petes, ground bloom flowers and a bunch of other "safe 'n sane" classics. Shelby and Sarah can't wait for night to fall. Neither can I.

In the midst of loading up the Raptor yesterday a guy came up to me and asked if the truck was really called the "Raptor." I confirmed that yes, the Raptor name was not a figment of my imagination, one that convinced me to have a detailed badge made just to satisfy my fleeting whim.

He just sort of shrugged his shoulders and said, "hmm...that's kind of cool."

And you know what? He was right. Raptor is a pretty cool name for this truck. There aren't very many cool car or truck names left anymore, so I'm glad that SVT decided to give this truck a proper title. Would be nice to see some luxury cars take the same tack instead of the constant stream of alphanumeric soup we get now.

This year, for the second year in a row, we honored the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor with an Inside Line Editors Most Wanted Award. And recently I had the privilege of handing off the trophy to the team of car guys that make Raptors for a living. These are the guys responsible for designing, engineering and marketing the coolest pickup truck of all time.

While driving down the 10 freeway, I slowly passed a smashed up car being hooked up to a two truck in the opposite lane. The dejected guy was sitting in his car. He looked up at the Raptor, smiled, and gave a thumbs up.

Another interesting weekend is in the books, thanks in part to our 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor. No snow this time. No jumps, either. Just a lot of cool back roads, a bit of gravel and nice spring weather.

While waiting for the Raptor to refuel, I decided to check the oil. I didn't realize that the hood and the grille would both rise from the bumper. The resultant opening is cavernous! I mean, really, quite massive. I think a Prius fell out.

The oil level was just fine, though there was a coating of brown dust over everything in the engine bay (just as any true off-roader should have). Closing the hood wasn't nearly as easy as opening, though. I'm not short, but I had to reach for the bottom of the grille on the tips of my toes. I'm guessing shorter folks will need to step onto the bumper, hold onto the grille and jump.

I had a plan this weekend. The idea was to go back up into the Cleveland National Forest above Silverado Canyon for a little more in-depth exploring in our 2010 Ford Raptor. There was a little rain in the forecast, but those forecasters are always wrong, right?. Weather Channel field reporters around here are always zooming in for a tight shot of some trickle in a gutter in an attempt to make it look like a raging torrent.

I was right: the weatherman was very wrong. It poured. And poured. And poured. Non-stop, all weekend. It's still raining right now and it will likely continue for a couple more days. A foot of rain has fallen up on Santiago Peak since I was last there.

"Great," you say. "Mud bogging supreme."

How about, no? Forest officials lock the gates when it rains to keep the narrow dirt fire roads from getting rutted, to prevent vehicles from getting stuck or, worse yet, to keep folks from sliding off the greasy tracks and over the side of the mountain.

That's OK. I'm all for "Tread Lightly." I'll get another chance when the weather is clear and the views are amazing. Until then I'm recycling a picture I took last weekend.

Our Raptor has taken over for the Ford Flex as our caption contest star. Speaking of stars, Dan Edmunds sent me this photo that makes the Raptor look like it works for SETI and is searching for extraterrestrial life.

I don't know about you but I was kind of sad that editor Scott Oldham didn't include a video in his post of our 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor tooling around the dunes when he took it up to Oceano Dunes a couple of weekends ago. But since he didn't, I went looking for our past videos we did on the Raptor. Found the above track test video with very comical shots of the 60-0 and skid pad tests. BTW, is it just me or does the truck sound like a TIE fighter when it's on the skid pad (0:32)?

But to see the Raptor in its element doing powerslides in the dirt and speeding through the desert, hit the jump. <3

I love driving the Raptor. Look, we all know the concerns on size and thirst, but you have to get past that with this vehicle. It's a big, mean truck that is an absolute blast to drive.

It starts with the special grille, then gets more impressive with it's raised stance, flared wheel wells, blacked out wheels, more than capable suspension and awesome engine. The topper for me is the Baja 1000 race-like steering wheel. In fact I think this thing might be capable enough to be Santa's sleigh. Forget the reindeer. This thing can fly.

Ford's Raptor is a self fulfilling prophesy. It's like all-wheel drive turbocharged cars were in 90s (anyone remember the Mitsubishi Eclipse and 3000GT?). Give Americans a car with all-wheel drive and turbocharged power delivery and we'll try and do burnouts. Give us a truck with Fox dampers, huge tires and lots of suspension stroke and we'll try and jump it.

Although the above launch is probably the best of my YouTube tour, there are other creative, painful, abusive and downright dangerous variations on the theme after the -- wait for it...jump.

When I signed up for the Raptor this past weekend, I did so thinking I might get up into the Mojave and do a little Quail hunting. But right after I grabbed the keys there were two things I remembered that sabotaged my plans.

1) I promised my lady I'd go to the Harry Potter premier with her friends

2) I promised my lady I'd go to her friends b-day party the next night.

Crap. Complete opposite to my plans. Not every weekend goes like you may have thought.

I got selfishly giddy at the prospect of taking the Raptor up to the ol' stomping grounds in the western Mojave. But it the end, it didn't matter. The weather was terrible and it's more important to spend time with my girl (save the petty comments dear readers). Just 'cuz I was home bound on her plans doesn't mean I didn't get to enjoy the Raptor.

Tricked out Civics at the stoplight? Saw them in my rear view mirror. This truck has got juice. Stomp that gas and it growls something mean. Big puddles let by the rain were a favorite target this past weekend. Ok so they aren't sand dunes, but they were the most truck like fun I could have in the Raptor while romping in suburbia.

Using the Raptor for errands was a mixed bag, however. It has excellent road manners and is very comfortable to drive, but finding a garage or a parking space it'll fit into can be a royal pain. I dread the holiday season in the Raptor.

Looking at the Raptor in my driveway Monday morning is worth 1/2 cup of coffee in terms of getting me going. Still need another 2 cups as I'm a caffeine junkie. There will be another weekend when I can get up to the Mojave or far north on CA-395, the most beautiful stretch of non-coastal highway in California. A weekend where I can use the full capabilities of the Raptor. This past one just might have been overkill.

There were so many good ones. Here are the others that made us jump for joy:

I think 4WL should work. (ergsum)
Built Fjord Tough? (ergsum)
If that orange Charger could make it, then I sure can. (jlacourt)
Today is a good day to fly (leescott)
Hey, it's just like Beggar's Canyon back home . . . (wshuff)
Don't you see? The bridge will exist in 1985. (aleclance)
Roman messed with the raptor fences and now they're out in the wild. We're all doomed. (old_volvo)
The Fall Guy (jacton)
The Roman decline was precipitated with the breaching of Hadrian's wall by raptors. (old_volvo)
There was no way the wife was getting the truck in the divorce... (herrstreet)
Who would have thought that dinosaurs would play a part in the fall of Roman's empire? (technetium99)
That's right, you skeptics, I jumped this in REVERSE! (vt8919)
I could really use those frog balls about now. (snipenet)
Sincerely, Idiot. (rayray633)
Photo taken right before "Bent" Romans got his new nickname. (ergsum)
How hard can it be? (sherief)
When in roam, do as the Romans do. (rayray633)
This was the Raptor's last ditch effort. (ergsum)
Give me a chain, I need to pull the Earth closer. (jughandle)
OH MAN, this is going to be the best Long Term blog post EVER! (vt8919)
Man v. Ford (chirsch3)

I'm snapping a pic of the Raptor at a Shell station -- figured I'd mention the joy of racking up $85 worth of 91 premium on the Inside Line fuel card -- when another gas station patron wanders up to me. He's standing around as his buddy fills his second-generation Integra (going classy with a primered front end, aftermarket wheels in back and black steel wheels in front).

"Hey, what kind of truck is that?" he asks. He's got a skullcap hat and a T-shirt that reads "That's What She Said."

"It's a Ford Raptor," I say.

"Huh. Cool. It looks like a black-ops truck. Or something from G.I. Joe," he says. Long pause. "Does it have any guns in it?" he asks. Hmm. Does he mean hidden machine guns and rockets or "guns" like personal firearms? Either way I'm not really inclined to find out. "Ha ha, no," I say. Time to go.

Still, he's right. Maybe Activision could put a Raptor into Call of Duty: Black Ops in addition to the Wrangler Black Ops.

Maybe we should call our 2010 F-150 SVT Raptor a muse. Photographer Scott Jacobs compared the Raptor to the Macho Man. Editor Paul Seredynski wrote that it reminds him of "Pepe" the truck in the Romancing the Stone movie. And for a recent caption contest we stuck a Darth Vader mask on it. Now I've got three other cultural references that often pop into my head when I'm driving the thing.

Yes, that's a real, full-size 1966 Mustang parked along side our 2010 Raptor. Early Mustangs were never large cars, but seriously. I should also mention the Raptor stuck out of the garage by about 18 inches.

Other than the price, you're looking at the biggest (ha!) reason why I wouldn't buy a Raptor - it simply doesn't fit in my garage. Here's to hoping the next Ranger has a Raptor-esque version.

The only thing worse than trying to park in Beverly HIlls is when your lazy butler forgets to wash your sock garters and they're still covered with schmutz! But if you're in a 2010 Ford Raptor, it's even harder.

Embiggen the image and you'll see that the lower garage has a height limit of 6'6". Well, that's not going to work. The Raptor is listed at 6'6" but the antenna scrapes on 7' ceilings and, well, even if you do bend the radio thing, 6'6" is not enough clearance on a 6'6" truck. Whatever, the upper garage has a clearance of 8'2" that'll work.

Except that it has a 5,000-lb weight rating. The Raptor weighs 6,080 without passengers. D'oh!

Thanks to gooney911 for this week's favorite caption. And thanks to Mark for his artwork.

So many to choose from. I really had to cut out a lot of good ones to get the list down to a reasonable level.

Here are the others that made us wheeze:

Juke, I am your father. (f1jay)
The Ford is strong with this one. (ergsum)
Let the Ford be with you. (sreed1)
Apology accepted, Admiral Takahashi. (technetium99)
Don't underestimate the power of the Ford. (technetium99)
I have altered the grill. Pray I don't alter it any further. (technetium99)
Luke, I ran over your father. (fushigi)
The Ford is with you, young F-150. But you are not a Raptor yet. (tatermctatums)
You are unwise to lower your suspension! (aleclance)
And inside you'll find a pasty old white man. (wshuff)
Just for once, let me look at your face with my own headlights. (zoomzoomn)
He is more Truck then Appliance now. (hybris)
The bumper sticker reads: R2D2 is my co-pilot (eidolways)
These are not the mods you are looking for. (eidolways)
I see you have a Buick LeSabre. A Jedi's car, much like your father's. (ergsum)
Warranty droid where prohibited. (ergsum)
I brake for Ewoks (gooney911)
Aren't you a little short for a crossover? (sherief)
Raptors drive in single file - to hide their numbers. (hybris)
Uuuuuse the torque, Luuuuke! (felonious)
I'd just as soon kiss an Aztek. (estreka)

Occasionally, the powers-that-be at One Edmunds Tower bring me, their long-suffering Senior Editor, Detroit, out of my mole-hole and into the brilliant sun of Santa Monica, California. This is one such occasion.

During my stay the kind man that sits at Mike Schmidt's desk saw fit to toss me the keys to the big, black bruiser, the SVT Raptor. Now, I'm sure we've mentioned to you before that this vehicle is, er, big boned for use in the utopia that is Santa Monica. It won't even fit in our parking garage, or at least not on the floor that we park most of the fleet.

So if I didn't already feel out-sized by Southern California standards, I now had a vehicle that was so wholly inconsistent with its surroundings that it was, freakin' fabulous. The above picture is taken in the underground garage of my hotel, a place I was warned could never accommodate such an oafish thing. I apologize for the awful cell-phone digital sketch above but there was no room in the Raptor for a real camera. Save for the whip antenna that did indeed put a whippin' on those low-hanging ducts, the Raptor did no damage to to the garage and only minimal damage to my atrophied arm muscles.

That sincere idiot surely would have killed himself, the vehicle and the structure of the hotel if faced with such a challenge. But that's his problem.

Me? I loved rolling through Santa Monica streets, 6.2-liter a-burbling like a great black shark, ushered reluctantly through town by a bevy of Toyota Prius pilot fish. And it seemed only appropriate that this vehicle should be parked at fancy Fred Segal, with its gnarly tire a bit on the landscaping. I love this thing, man.

I've always been amused by how freaked out people get about the number 6. My phone number starts with four of 'em. I get lots of women replying "yikes" and "oh dear." I had someone in Georgia hold a cross up at me and light a Virgin Mary candle. Actually, I can't back that up, but the Raptor hit 6666.6 miles this week. Aaaaaaaaaaah!

Let's say you're driving a Corvette ZR-1 and dead-stopped traffic won't let you use all billion horsepower. Now let's say the long term 2010 Ford Raptor is behind you. What's that like? Sort of like this. You don't see a lot of the Raptor when its behind you, mostly just that big grill and the headlights.

When we parked, I asked the Raptor driver if he'd been tailgating to freak out the guy in the expensive bathtub. He said that he was not. I showed him this picture and he promised to show me what tailgating looked like on the way out.

I've been the passenger in our 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor lots of times but last night was the first time I actually got behind its wheel. And I have to say, it may surprise those of you who are familiar with my Mini obsession, but I LOVE the Raptor's size. Last night sitting in rush-hour traffic, I couldn't help but marvel over the fact that I could actually see over the gridlock. HA ha! Everyone else is so short!

And props really should be given to the Raptor for its visibility despite its intimidating stature. Even though you get a sense of its immensity while driving around on city streets, the large side mirrors and rearview mirror allow you to negotiate the roads with relative ease. See below. Just mind the cyclists and bikers.

This was the scene in my garage last night. Pretty sure that Chevy Metro and Vespa-like scooter were scared spitless.

Also note how little room to spare there is for the Raptor in my non-compact parking space. It's a good thing a Metro and a Vespa-like scooter thing parks next to me, because if it was a Suburban, things could get messy. Probably best not to own a Raptor if you live in a apartment building, then.

I went out my lady Friday and I thought the Raptor might not be able to fit in a parking garage, so it sat parked out in front of my house all night. When I hopped into the truck Saturday morning, right on the windshield was a ticket.

A few expletives later, I stood out on the rail to grab said violation from under the wiper. Violation of VC 5200 Display of Plates, aka - no front plate. If I were a cartoon, steam would have been coming out of my ears right then. Ooooooooh I just wanted to crush and rip the ticket up right there. A ticket in front of my own house! That just didn't feel right to me.

But I thought about it for a minute. There can be a debate for a lot of vehicles and whether the front plate on the bumper just kills the looks. Would you put a plate on the front of the Raptor? Would you run the risk of tickets to preserve the looks?

Here you see our long-term 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor sitting in its designated parking space on P1. We use P1 for the Raptor because P3 (where our test cars normally park) has a low roof, and we don't want the Raptor to bang into it.

Now comes the irony...

This happens to be the exact same parking spot we used for the Mini E during its tenure in our long-term fleet. Did we use P1 for the Mini because it also risked banging into the ceiling on P3? Not quite.

But the all-electric car did need a special high-voltage wall charger, and routing that voltage to P3 was more difficult (and expensive). In fact, that's the Mini E's charger and bright orange cord on the wall, hanging forlornly next to the Raptor. Too bad the truck doesn't have a battery pack we could plug in and charge up to cut its fuel use.

So, same reserved parking spot; two vastly different cars using it for vastly different reasons.

Let's talk off-street parking. If you live in a big city, or even within 50 miles of a big city (like me) you know off-street parking is highly coveted. You can't have too much -- particularly if you're an impulsive car geek who spends too much time browsing Hemming's and eBay.

So a couple years ago I increased my home's off-street parking count by one after converting the former dirt patch next to my driveway into interlocking paving stones. The stones look good, don't crack over time, and can easily support the weight of a modern car (or truck).

However, while converting the dirt lot to paving stones was simple, converting the curb/sidewalk area below the dirt was complex. It involved permits from the city, re-routing a drain, and a major demolition effort. Certainly doable, but costly and strewn with red tape. So I decided to forego the curb shaving and just drive over to the paving stones from the existing driveway lip.

In the intervening two years I've confirmed this system for using my extra offstreet parking works, but it's a pain.

Except for our Long-Term 2010 Ford SVT Raptor.

Follow the jump to see video of the Raptor's curb-scaling in action.

From the bottom inset image in the photo above it's clear a car like our 2004 Chevrolet Malibu can't drive over this curb. It has to angle onto the paving stones from the official driveway lip, meaning it always looks strewn across the paving stones and it takes practice to get the car all the way over there without blocking the driveway or falling off the edge of the paving stones into our neighbor's front yard (she really hates that).

Thanks to pushrodpower for this week's favorite caption. How could we turn down a caption in the actual Hutt language?

Here are the others that had us rolling:

American Graffiti (ergsum)
The hills have eyes. (mrb5091)
Ford Raptor, don't take it for granite. (ergsum)
SYNC, PLAY ROLLING STONES! (vt8919)
Don't be fooled...he's incredibly gneiss. (vt8919)
Ford Raptor, it doesn't mesa around. (ergsum)
Your mind powers will not work on me boy! (anonimo)
Separated at birth? (vvk)
Postcard from the Vader family vacation at Beggar's Canyon (deagle13)
May the FORD be with you... (mrryte)
The instructions said to park near the cliff face. (ergsum)
Look! What's that...a head in the road?! (ergsum)
The Rocky Horror Pickup Show (ergsum)
And Chevy thought they were "like a rock"! (teampenske3)
If you paint a face on a rock, are you defacing it? (teampenske3)

This is our long-term Raptor lined up with my 1975 F-250 High Boy. As you can see, Ford's idea of an off-road pick up has changed a bit over the last 35 years.

Back then, the factory lift consisted of blocks underneath the leaf springs. For extra damping there was a dual shock option for the front. Traction? How about some Goodyear G78 snow tires?

And power? How about a torque-rich and horsepower-challenged 360 big block hooked to a four-speed manual on the floor? With 8.4:1 compression and a two-barrel carburetor, it put out a whopping 196 horsepower from the factory.

So yes, the Raptor puts out more than twice the horsepower, probably gets 50% better mileage and drives like a normal vehicle instead of a mildly-domesticated farm implement.

Of course, I like driving the '75 as much as I do the Raptor, so to each his own I guess.

We decided to make Jawbone Canyon OHV area the first detour of the trip. For those unaware, Jawbone is an expanse of desert maintained by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) for recreational use and located off Highway 14. It offers trails for hiking, dirt bikes, 4x4s and general dusty fun.

But before we even reached the highway turnoff we saw this guy. Take the jump.

The last time I towed with our 2010 Ford F-150 Raptor SVT, I piled a bunch of stuff in the backseat. Namely, plastic bins that I wanted to stack back there. However, the giant jack in the fuzzy satchel got in the way and made the boxes sit all cattywampus. That's all I was really after with this blog entry.

Driving home last night I came to a conclusion about our Raptor. If there was such a thing as a human and truck being born of the same mother, I feel the Raptor has been taken from its brother for a very long time.

This year's Oregon trip came up quickly, with little fanfare. That's partly because the usual ruminations over which vehicle to take became unnecessary when my wife and youngest daughter had to stay behind due to a last-minute schedule conflict. With just myself and eldest daughter Shelby making the trip, any vehicle was going to work.

And then the 2010 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor arrived at the office--the 6.2-liter version with 411 horsepower, no less--and the decision became easy. Shell and I would have a pair of comfy seats up front, with Sync and Sirius to keep us entertained, and our stuff could ride safely inside the cab behind us.

With just two of us, a single-day banzai run would be easier to pull off. In fact we're here already, sitting in Dad's driveway near the Pistol River/Carpenterville/Brookings tri-city area. Here's a little of what we saw along the way.